


Sleeping As I Walk

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: A Little Unsteady [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Reference to Skip Westcott, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Panic Attacks, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Peter Parker, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 05:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14867585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “Where did you learn that?” Tony asks, voice raw.The twiddling stops. That’s all Tony can make out from the outskirts of his line of vision. He’s not ready to lift his head from his hands yet and look at the kid.“Um, Google?”“Geez.” The things kids Google these days. Tony has half a mind to ask what drove Peter to searchways to stop a panic attack, but the better part of him leaves the question untouched.---Beneath his cavalier, sassmaster exterior, Tony’s a sensitive guy. Peter knows that. Being faced with a full-grown man in the middle of an anxiety attack, however, is a completely different story, and Peter must draw on all his own strength and maturity to offer Tony a shoulder to lean on.





	Sleeping As I Walk

**Author's Note:**

> This is in _no way_ a Starker fic. Just putting it out there. I write Iron Dad  & Spider Son only.
> 
> Also, hi, hello, howdy, how are y'all? I've been a massive Marvel nerd for years now but only had the confidence to start posting Marvel fanfics right around yesterday! Blame my buddy Bee for enabling my newfound obsession with Iron Dad & Spider Son. Yes, their relationship absolutely destroys me in every single new movie and writing one-shots of their dubious mentor/mentee, father/son, co-dependent relationship is my only (un)healthy way of coping.
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: ["Next to You" by Of Rust & Bone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_KYJIFBBhs).
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

He’s all too familiar with the feeling of falling. It’s quiet, just an echo of the darkness laughing, and even if there were anyone around him they would merely blink and miss it.

His thumb runs circles around the edge of the arc reactor in his chest. The unconscious gesture brings but small comfort to him, but it’s something, _something_ to ground him. Counting his breaths has never consistently worked for him. As much as he spurns physical contact with sarcasm ready on his tongue, he’s a tactile person. He needs to touch things in the midst of episodes like this so he doesn’t keep falling, so he doesn’t lose sight of the tangible world, so he doesn’t _forget_.

The arc reactor sends minute vibrations through his hypersensitive fingertips. He counts the ever so slight pulse after every tenth vibration. Next, he lays his other hand on the counter before him. The contrast of the coolness of the granite knocks a wave of relief through him so strong his knees start to tremble. Some part of him is aware how white his knuckles grow, gripping the edge of the counter for support.

Now he seeks the sounds around him. The uneven gurgle of the coffee maker, the most insistent sound in his environment. The low whine of the refrigerator. The hum of the light above him. The erratic gallop of his own heart.

Finally, he blinks and lifts his head the smallest fraction of an inch. Sight. Reflections of the toaster and the styrofoam cup he dropped on its side. The moonbeam pouring in at an angle. And a new disturbance in the light: a shadow across his path.

Tony knows it’s Peter without having to look up. Logic tells him so a beat later, but it was instinct that first convinced him.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks casually, picking up the styrofoam cup again and placing it in the coffeemaker. He can taste the irony of his own question.

It takes a strangely long moment for Peter to reply. Though it’s not more than a second and a half, the hesitation is rare enough for the hyperverbal teenager that Tony frowns to himself at it. Peter’s voice, however, seems steady. “Not tired,” he says, and it sounds like the truth. “Thought of getting a drink.”

Somehow, Tony wonders if the spidey senses had anything to do with this ill-timed visit.

“Early day tomorrow,” he reminds the kid, busying his hands with the sugar and cream. “Don’t stay up too late.”

A pause. Then, after a sly silence: “O-oh, were you talking to _me_ , Mr. Stark?”

His heart’s still racing under the flimsy veil of his skin. Tony turns around. Crosses his arms over his chest, sips the burning coffee without even a flinch. Schools his face into a scowl. “Nuh-uh, now don’t think that just because you’re having the first sleepover of your life in the compound, you can go dethroning the sass master. I’m the adult here. I can drink coffee at one in the morning. You, on the other hand, can take your cute Avengers pajamas and run along to bed.”

Peter opens his mouth as if to sass him back, but then glances down at his Avengers sleeping pants and shuts his mouth again.

“I’ve had sleepovers before,” Peter finally manages to squeak out.

“I’m going to pretend we didn’t just have a discussion about your track record for sleepovers.”

“You should head to bed too, Mr. Stark.”

“Nope,” says Tony, popping his _p_. “I just made coffee. Does it look like I’m going to sleep? There’s this bunch of updates I’ve been rolling around my head, _maybe_ even a couple of tweaks to your suit, too, if you can _promise_ me you won’t ever make Karen hang up on me again because I swear, kid--”

“Coffee’s bad for your anxiety,” Peter interrupts him quietly.

“I’m--what?”

The way Peter sets his mouth so firmly then distinctly reminds Tony of a shiba inu preparing to have a staredown, but he’s suddenly unable to scoff when he glances down and catches sight of how the kid’s fists are starting to clench at his sides.

“Mr. Stark, I’m just saying, if you want your heart rate to go down, caffeine really, really isn’t the way to go.”

Tony wants to argue, but as if on cue, the pain that has been lurking just behind his ribs all along jabs at him full force. His chest tightens and he folds forward with a gasp, just barely able to keep himself standing with his palms braced against his knees.

He’s not here.

Falling.

He’s not here.

Hurtling against the wind with such brute force that he can almost feel the air slice through his iron mask. Eyes blinking, tears burning, alarms blaring in his ears and his head.

The speck of black in the distance plummeting with all too much certainty toward the hard, hard ground.

Someone screaming. There’s screaming. But he never screams when the fear hits because it always punches him square in the throat enough to stop his breathing.

Rhodey.

There’s still screaming.

Rhodey.

The scream goes silent and the alarm in his ears cuts to a black that strips him completely.

Rhodey. He’s not here.

Like every bad dream, every night terror, every panic attack that dares bleed into a second of a flashback, the memory doesn’t quite get to the part where he saw the impact of the speck of black with the earth. Sometimes he’s convinced himself he never saw it, that the image he holds in the back of his brain is a false memory, but he’s an expert at this pain. He knows better.

“...and there’s a chipped tile in front of you. You’re leaning back against the stove. It feels cold, right? Really cold. This thing is probably made of something like titanium, gosh, Mr. Stark, I never noticed until now. Where do you even get these appliances? Are they custom built? Wait, do you design them yourself? No, wait, why would you do that-- _anyway_ , that hiss was the sound of your coffee maker. Um, what else? Oh, yeah. The fridge is making a low kind of noise, too…”

The soothing voice drifts in and out of Tony’s ears. He finally has the courage to move. He’s surprised to find himself sitting on the freezing tiles, his back to the range and his legs braced against the breakfast bar. He doesn’t remember when he slid down from a crouch to a slump. Or when Peter had decided to sit on the floor next to him with his young, unscarred hands twiddling their thumbs over his knees.

“Where did you learn that?” Tony asks, voice raw.

The twiddling stops. That’s all Tony can make out from the outskirts of his line of vision. He’s not ready to lift his head from his hands yet and look at the kid.

“Um, Google?”

“Geez.” The things kids Google these days. Tony has half a mind to ask what drove Peter to search _ways to stop a panic attack_ , but the better part of him leaves the question untouched.

Peter shifts his hand as if to lay it on Tony’s knee before thinking better of it and letting his palm drift back to his own lap. He flattens his fingers against the rumpled cotton of his pajamas. “I--I tried doing the breathing exercises thing but it didn’t seem to be working all too well. And the name-five-things thing. But. Um.” He seems to flounder for a way to say _nothing worked_ without sounding judgmental.

“None of those work for me.”

“Oh? Oh.” Peter’s right hand starts to tap a patternless rhythm on his leg, right on top of where the Hulk’s fringe of hair should have been on the faded comic strip print of the pajama pants.

“Yup. Nope.” Tony scrubs his face with his hands, up and down, up and down. He struggles to keep his tone even, to ward off the unjustifiable shame he knows all too well accompanies these kinds of encounters. “Yeah, it’s not your fault, kid. You wouldn’t have known. Apparently anything that forces me to engage with my surroundings, much less a conversation, is too taxing for my brain. I’m not always a genius, see.”

“Eh, still a genius, Mr. Stark. Just not checked in at the moment.”

For the first time, Tony snorts in something like laughter. “Where’d you really learn that?”

“Do you want some water, Mr. Stark?”

As hazy as he feels, Tony doesn’t miss the way the kid deflects the question. “Not thirsty.”

“I-I really think you need some water, Mr. Stark.”

Tony hears the stutter and he lets it go, just this time. It sounds too much like himself and he can’t afford to pursue that path right now. “I’ve got my coffee, kid.”

“Nope, not anymore, you don’t.” And just like that, Peter swoops in to snatch the mug from between Tony’s feet and dump its contents down the drain. Tony accepts the bottled water from the fridge with a theatrical sigh of defeat.

“So.” Peter’s still standing, leaned carefully against the counter, with his arms crossed in a way that hides the hands he’s tucked under his armpits. His bare toe rubs at an imaginary spot on the tile. “Do you...need to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Trick question, Mr. Stark. I said _need_ , not _want_. I think you need to talk about it.”

“Jesus on a motorcycle, kid.”

At least the boy has some shred of decency left to sound halfway apologetic. “I really think it would help, Mr. Stark. Not forcing you. Just...don’t want you to bottle things up.”

“This isn’t the kind of stuff for bedtime stories, buddy. I really shouldn’t be burdening you with these kinds of problems. It’s my business. My dark, pathetic, messed-up business.”

“Sorry, Mr. Stark. But ever since the Bite and--and--ever since you showed up at my apartment and made me the suit, this all kind of became my business.”

The words must have come out wrong for Peter, because when Tony risks a glance up into the kid’s eyes for a second, he’s swallowing down something--an explanation, a clarification. But perhaps it is a testament to the tacit bond between them that Tony already knows perfectly well what Peter meant. He moves his hand upward in a not unkind gesture of understanding.

“This is why the world doesn’t deserve you,” he finds himself muttering. “Look, I--” Interrupts himself with a sigh. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m sure it does.”

“He’s not your friend, so…”

“Who?”

“Rhodey. Rhodes. Colonel James Rhodes.”

Peter’s eyes go wide. Tony almost finds it in himself to chuckle silently, because never has he underestimated the boy’s intelligence, especially in a moment like this. He’s sure the kid has already pieced together more than half of the chaos rattling around in Tony’s head.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Peter’s voice does that odd thing where it pitches up in a tinge of emotion.

Tony holds up a hand as he gulps down more water. “Let me finish, kid. Of course it was my fault. It was my fault since the day I started designing that damn suit.”

“But, Mr. Stark--”

“It was my fault the day I stood by my stupid pride and idiotic principles and got people I cared about involved. Yes, yes, I _know_ you’re going to say they know what they’re getting into. But that doesn’t mitigate the fact that _I_ know far better than they do what they were really facing. He wouldn’t even have been in that fight if not for me.”

Peter swallows again. “Maybe he wasn’t fighting just because he’s your best friend. Maybe he was also fighting for principles of his own.”

“What difference does it make? He got hurt. Peter. You understand me?” The desperation suddenly overcomes him, an urge to leap to his feet and seize Peter by the shoulders and shake him and shake him till he _understands_. He doesn’t. “Kid, look at me. Do you understand? He. Got. Hurt.”

There’s a gap of silence that stretches out on the moonbeam between them and walks the line delicately between pain and comfort. Heavy breathing fills their ears. It takes Tony a full twenty seconds to realize it’s not just him anymore.

A thump, and Peter has returned to his original sitting position next to Tony. His right hand finally comes down to press against Tony’s knee and the other stays grounded on the freezing tile on the other side.

“I thought we should be accountable,” Tony whispers. Broken. “I believed it. I still believe it. That’s why I should be held accountable, too.”

“Rhodey isn’t just a civilian that got swept up in the Avengers’ battles.”

Tony wants to scream. He wants to jump into a pit of icy water. No, he wants to disintegrate. Feel nothing. Even in his suffering and guilt, he scoffs to himself, he’s still selfish.

Instead, he keeps talking. 

“You know what it’s like to fall, right, Pete? From a distance of, say, a skyscraper to the pavement? You swing around all the time. You’re good, kid, you’re amazing. But I’m sure there’s been times that some part of you can’t help but look at those web shooters and wonder _what if_.”

The sight of Peter’s jaw rolling in the corner of his vision tells him he’s right.

“And that’s quite a feeling. A rush, almost like adrenaline except it’s dialed to three hundred, you know? But here’s the thing, right. Here’s the thing. There’s no way you could compare that feeling to the feeling of watching somebody falling, and you’re miles away, maybe closer than that, but it feels like you’re miles away and you--you can’t--” A choke stops him. “You can’t. You just. Can’t.”

Peter’s whisper draws him slowly back from inside himself. “I know, Mr. Stark. I know.”

Though Tony knows he’s not crying, he cannot for the life of him deny the burning behind his eyelids. He blinks and swivels his head to finally give the kid the eye contact he deserves. When he does, he’s stunned to find just the same depth of emotion glistening in Parker’s irises. Maybe more. 

Peter knows. He’s experienced it. He _understands_.

Now is not the time to ask. Somehow, he knows Peter wouldn’t want to answer, not tonight, even if the question did manage to stumble from his lips.

Peter sucks in a breath, and it’s every bit as unsteady as Tony’s.

“You have to stay grounded. Argue with yourself sometimes. Your brain is going to throw painful stuff at you, Mr. Stark. And the worst part is that it feels true. That’s the whole trick of it. If _you_ know the truth, though, even if you don’t believe it for a long while, you just keep telling yourself that truth and slowly it starts to take over the larger part of your brain that wants to kill you with guilt.”

Tony can’t find words. He nods instead. Shakily, rapidly.

“A-and people. Yeah, people.” Peter licks his lips. “If someone knows what you’re going through and you tell them often enough when this happens, then they can add their own voice to grounding you with the truth...you know?”

“I’ve tried therapy enough times to want to take a gauntlet and blast myself in the head,” Tony admits hoarsely.

“It’s never too late to find the right one,” is Peter’s reply in his bright, quiet voice. “But...maybe...it should be people who know you and care about you. Y’know? People you love, who love you back.”

“Why should they have to deal with my shit?”

“But that’s why they’re there. Through all the good times and the shit. Especially for the shit. That’s why they’re the ones who love you.” Peter’s grip on Tony’s knee suddenly tightens. For a moment of infinity, Tony feels smaller, he feels like a child under the gentle touch of a father he never knew. “And hey, Mr. Stark, maybe you’ll discover that they’re stronger than you think. And they can help you when you feel like you can’t help yourself anymore.”

With tentative movements Tony slides his left hand up to brush over Peter’s, settle on top of it, then return the little squeeze. He can hardly count the twists in the veins interlacing over the back of his hand. Peter’s, on the other hand, is smooth and warm in his hand, seemingly fragile but belying the strength in those slender fingers. The palm of a child and yet the grip and words of a man.

“Sounds like you talk from experience,” Tony says lightly.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I do.”

The silence forms the question in the air.

“I…I, uh. It was… I grew up as a really trusting kid, you know? Not that that was a bad thing. M-my parents, you know, they raised me to believe in the good in people. And I still do. But, um. I trusted the wrong person. I was really young, and something was telling me deep in my gut that it was wrong, but I--I couldn’t believe that that someone I trusted would be--be so-- _not good_.” The last two words seem to leave Peter’s chest as if they were yanked out along with all the air in his lungs. And the power in those two simplistic words, so clumsy and inarticulate and like a child’s, punches Tony square in the stomach.

His jaw feels slack.

He squeezes Peter’s hand again, this time with a fierceness and protectiveness. He--he _understands_.

“You must’ve felt like you were falling pretty hard, huh, buddy?”

“I was ten,” Peter replies with a sad smile. “Everything felt like a pretty hard fall at that time. But Aunt May caught me.”

Tony’s gut twists inward, despite himself.

“Your aunt is a strong woman,” he says, suddenly gruff. “I highly doubt anything could break her.”

Peter looks like he’s about to open his mouth to argue the point, but no sound comes out. Perhaps it’s a story for another night. Tony is grateful for the boy’s sense of judgment.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Peter decides to say instead. “Talk to someone you know and love. They can handle it, believe me. You can trust them. They’ll catch you when you’re falling.”

At that instant, Tony is blinded by one thought and one thought alone rolling around in his mind: _At least I started with one_.

“You should finish your water, Mr. Stark, and then head to bed.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

“I don’t want to head up just yet.”

“I’ll tell FRIDAY,” the kid threatens.

Tony pulls a face. “Ugh. Fine, mom.” 

“I’ll stay with you if it makes you feel better.”

“What, are you my bedside nurse now, too? Spiderman was already enough, intern was pushing it. I let you be my therapist for tonight. That’s it.”

The ghost of a laugh flickers across Peter’s face. There’s the sunny boy he knows. Maybe tonight marks the moment from which he will never be able to look at the kid again without second-guessing the happiness he finds there. Maybe the way Peter’s eyes shone with an odd and unnatural wetness in the moonlight will never leave his memory. Maybe, just maybe, Tony will never be able to unsee the darkness he glimpsed cloaking this boy by the shoulders.

But maybe he shouldn’t. And maybe he doesn’t want to.

Because somewhere deep down, behind the toothy grins and Star Wars rants and crumpled paper balls and high-pitched, heartwarming laughs, Peter Parker is already more than twice the man Tony could ever dare hope to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Kindly let me know what you think! I welcome all types of feedback. (I'm pretty old, I can take it. :3) This will be the first in a series of one-shots, not necessarily in chronological order or related to each other. Also, I will be attempting to write more fluff and humor for the forthcoming installments.
> 
> Tysm for reading!! <3
> 
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